Useful Searches

By the hands of the Gods, you have been plucked from your time and from your world, dropped into the box.
Only the box is a world of its own.

We are a mass crossover based on the concept of Pandora's Box. Characters from nearly any fandom can be played here. Because of the endless character possibilities, we are canon only here at Pandora. Take a peek at our rules and plot information before starting your new life in Pandora.

the bus is late.

Pitter-patters of footsteps through, out, and all around belonging to other students were somewhat of a distraction as they thumped and bumped in time with each other like a military march of educational warfare. But, wiser men had always said: without adversity, there is no challenge. Without challenge, there is no reward. ... It was one of her dad's favorite quotes, the former Shujin student recollected as memories pulled her further away from her tasks at hand.

As she thought about it, he was right. It was a right saying, full of right truth and righteousness in its meaning.

It almost seemed to resonate as Makoto's eyes drifted downwards at the cluttered mess of a table she'd created out of her study materials; it wasn't her dorm room, so she had to keep it contained... but her major was one that was quite difficult to stick one or two sticky notes on and call it a day. The textbooks were dense, bound in leather make and inscribed with the workings of this world's systems of justice. The Unabridged Restatement of Due Process, Pandoran Labor Laws and Law History, A Form and Style Guide for Law Students, and Satan's Advice to Young Lawyers.

Papers and pages drifted with each passing breeze, Makoto's entire body drenched and bent over the space she'd occupied within the tables of the lounge. Although it was her first year at the school (being her first time ever being in Pandora), Makoto's resolve from her upbringing was never one that changed.

In fact, it was that very upbringing that kept her going even here. It was the one not by her father to her herself, but by her father to her sister to herself. Sae Niijima, the hard-working and misunderstood. Sae wasn't always perfect-- she wasn't the perfect sister, she wasn't the greatest parental figure. But what she did for Makoto, she did with her fullest heart.

It was the resolve in her sister's shadow that Makoto saw fully. It was the respect that she deserved and reciprocated from elder to younger. That's why, at least she figured to herself, Makoto sat in a college commons in a reality divorced from her own with gainful mind to follow where the justice needed.

Just the way a Niijima should.

Just like Sae would want, the older's mind thinking. Just like a poem of long meaning, brought to Makoto's mind in Sae's memory. Her lips parting, a solemn breath as her voice carried in a rhythmic tune as her eyes continued to stare and her hand write.

"You know you could be anyone,
God forgive your unborn sons,
I hope they don't end up like me.

Drag my mind through streets of shame,
Blame myself, forgive the game,
That's how we deal with boys like me.

But despite what you've been told,
I once had a soul,
Left somewhere behind,
A former friend of mine."

The college. Futaba had added it to the new Promise List shortly after arriving and meeting with Akira again; it had taken a couple days to reaffirm her sense of duty toward it, true, but she'd kept her word in the end. Even if it was a promise she'd made a world away, she had a way to see it through here and now. If there wasn't an obstacle she needed to reach for the opportunity while it was there. Even more important, she needed to show her friends that she was doing this while they were still here. Pandora took people away, everyone said so. Before they left at least they'd know she was really, really trying.

Trying, though, could only get you so far. She's gotten onto campus by herself, managed to walk around for a little while trying to find the office, examined the maps, even ventured to ask a few people with varying success, and then make her way to the door- but stopped there. Meeting with people. Being questioned. Filling out papers. Strangers everywhere. No. Nonono.

Turning on her heel she walked away, feeling a little defeated- but no, it was okay. Baby steps. She'd try again tomorrow. For now, she'd go check out places that made her calmer, like the library, and which she'd found earlier during her wanderings. Now it was easy enough to find, and as she stepped in and looked between the shelves she spotted a familiar figure poring over books. Instantly she felt a bit more steady and started over- though when she heard the quiet singing she hesitated for a moment, not wanting to interrupt. So instead of saying a word she moved around to the other side of the table from the books and crouched in a chair and hugged her knees, peering over the stack at her friend.

The leathery couch of the lounge's innermost sanctuary, behind a bastille's cover of non-fiction complete with buttresses of biology textbook spires, was the one that Makoto simply continued to drift further into as her mind simply stopped focusing for a moment. The memories flooding to her of what was expected of her back home became cumbersome-- no, it became even worse. Her life had direction back in Shibuya, even if it was a direction she was pressured into by Sae, her father, Principal Kobayakawa, and even the other students of Shujin Academy.

But as much of a relieving air as it was to be free of that after becoming a thief and then getting pulled here, Pandora didn't... offer much solution in the way of life.

Being here, she never aged-- as long as she would be here, she'd still always be a teenager in the limbo of her life. Despite that, she was considered a full-fledged adult responsible for herself in Pandora. Sure, she was getting along. She definitely did have Akira to thank for that, since his job as LUX was pretty lucrative. ...Even if she didn't like the idea of bartending itself, or the way party girls would inevitably flirt with him.

It was still all too overwhelming.

Makoto's back curved as she sunk deeper into the couch, her head slowly arching back against the cushion as she slowly began to stare at the ceiling while her eyes drifted upwards. It was a pretty boring room altogether, being part of an old timey castle aesthetic. It was coated in brown, dusty books with shelves surrounding it. It was rather boring, as Makoto thought anyway. ... Yet, as she began to lean back, her eyes caught the glimpse of something vibrant.

Orange. Like a dreamsicle. ... Paired with black and green. She squinted, her mind registering where she'd seen that before as she wracked for answers.

"Futaba?" She called out, her tone dripping with more surprise than inquisition. She said it moreso like... What the hell are you doing outside?!

Sometimes it was easy for Futaba to forget that, once upon a time in Yongen-Jaya, she'd been unable to leave her room. Oh, she remember the feeling of it, how she'd closed her tomb and wanted to die so much that she felt unworthy to even do that deed, and the loneliness. She'd grown since then though- because of her friends, and her Shadow, and everything that she'd seen in Pandora. Coming here had been a shock and at first she'd been so afraid she couldn't even think of taking Leo's offer of help when he'd given it. Now she'd moved out of there, her first safe haven, and moved to another, with a wild world outside of it.

Except that sometimes she still pushed herself too hard- like the social equivalent of staying awake for days to work on a problem. Today she had, what with getting to the school and then wandering it, and then trying to register. And she'd hoped so much that she could get everything done, so she could surprise her friends by the fact that she was attending, not that she was almost doing that. So it was with a slightly abashed smile that Futaba greeted Makoto, and a small wave as she leaned up a little to look over the stack of books a little better. It was natural that she was surprised, after all. Futaba was as quiet as a ninja when she wasn't expecting to be.

"Yo," she said, somewhat pointlessly, then looked down at the spines of the books for a moment. "Thought I'd come say hi. That's a lot of law books."

"Yo, indeed." Makoto repeated as she began to sit back up a small increment of an angle or two, her attention slowly returning to the dense legal study session regimenting itself on the desk though only some of them being part of the required reading for her paper. It wouldn't have been a surprise for someone like Makoto to choose a legal career in prosecution or defense given her heritage and background of being exclusively a family of cops.

... Though, as she did belong to the ragtag group of emotional thieves, she couldn't necessarily follow along quite as well as a literal guard for the city.

The moment that Futaba mentioned the sheer size of the manuscripts however, a surprising groan escaped the former honors student of the local high school back in their Tokyo home town. For once, she was having issue simply... being in the same room as a book, at least one this densely written and of such great stature. "I'll say-- just lifting this thing was like Khufu got pulled into Pandora and forced me to start building a second Great Pyramid for him by myself!"

Her back pressed into the leather of the couch again, a resonant squeak as she slid along it. "But," Makoto digressed as she focused on Futaba again. "It's surprising to see you out. Are you trying to start school here?"

An Egyptian reference, that one she understood, and while she couldn't speak to the weight of the books they probably weren't two and a half tons. Still, it was pretty apt anyway; if she wanted to make a pyramid out of these texts they were close enough to square from the thickness of their pages that she probably wouldn't have to adjust the equations too much to make it work. "I bet he would have approved. Pharaohs were all about some laws and books, especially ones that were hard to decipher," she pointed out in a tone of sympathy tinged with amusement, reaching over to open one of the covers and then let it drop.

It was pretty surprising to her to be out, even now, but here she was, and she was actually feeling more happy and comfortable with it than she would have expected- just so long as she didn't think about her earlier mishap with the enrollment office. "Yes. Have to keep the promises I made on my list," she told Makoto with a small, slight abashed smile. She could probably have lied and let Queen get back to her work, since there was so much of it she was doing, but lying to a fellow Thief was wrong, and really stupid too. Especially with how much Makoto tried to look after her. "Tried to, anyway. Got to the office."

She cocked her head and picked up one of the smaller books of law and shifted it to another stack before continuing. "But there's always tomorrow, right? I'll try again then. What about you though? Are you going to be a prosecutor like your sister, or something else here? Daisy says that they're always looking for good people to work in the guard and for the DoI."